Hi

My Son has 02 octavia 1.9sdi with 255000 miles on clock. Yesterday whilst changing gear pedal went to floor, he stoped and pulled the pedal up by hand and now the pedal will not go down. Spoke to local taxi firm who have lots of these cars and used to own my sons one also. They suggested removal of the the large cover of end of gearbox as the they thought the clutch arm may have sheared of the splines. Unfortunately this was not the case. However the Clutch release bearing is pushed and jammed well down the shaft that it sits in and we cannot remove it.

Would appreciate any help to this, dont fancy removing gearbox unless absolutely necessary. Clutch was changed about 50k ago and showed no problems prior.

Thanking you in anticipation

Are you sure that it is not at the pedal. Sometimes a metal bracket welded to the pedal breaks, it's possible that the mechanism may have slipped and jammed it.

In an SDi it's not a conventional release bearing. Under the metal plate on the passenger end of the box there is a metal cylinder (release bearing) that is operated by the hydraulics, this pushes on a thin metal rod that goes right through the box to the clutch, the rod pushes on a round sprung metal plate, this plate acts on the clutch cover to disengage the clutch. What I have seen happen in the past is the rod wears a hole in the plate and pushes through.

Hi,

Pedal seems fine once slave cylinder disconnected , I fear you are correct in you thinking of the metal rod has punctured the plate over the pressure plate, if only I could get the release bearing out of the shaft I may be able to confirm this before stripping the clutch

Thanks for your response so far